For the first time yesterday the mainstream media had the guts to take on billionaire Alisher Usmanov, whose hyperactive libel lawyers succeeded for a few days in closing this blog down.

Channel 4 yesterday showed a Dispatches programme on the Russian oligarchs, which for the first time in Bruitish mainstream media put the case that Arsenal shareholder Usmanov is a convicted blackmailer and racketeer. You can see the programme here:

Sadly I cannot see it in Ghana (I get a not available in your area message) so I do not yet know how much of my own interview in the programme got past the Channel 4 layers. It is however typical of Usmanov that I can find not a single comment on the programme in the mainstream media or even in any of the Arsenal blogs. All of the major Arsenal blogs have in the past received threatening letters from Schillings, Usmanov’s solicitors.

I shall be posting at the end of this week on a US racketeer, Gene E Phillips, and his corrupt – and so far succesful – attempt to rip off billions of dollars from the poor people of Ghana. I gave an interview on this to the FT last week and I am hopeful they will be running a less detailed expose on Thursday, on which I will follow up.

Meantime, it is worth noting that libel bullies the Quilliam Foundation and their pathetic lawyers Clarke Willmott seem to have skulked away. Not one of the individuals – including Jack Straw, Tim Spicer, Allisher Usmanov and Ed Hussain – who has set the lawyers onto this blog has ever dared to go to court.

That is because this blog does not libel, it tells the truth, and not one of them dares to face the truth in court, even with England’s notoriously oppressive libel laws on their side.

28 thoughts on “The Convicted Criminal Alisher Usmanov”

Gene Philips is always seen where the money is at. I am surprised FT allowed you an opportunity to have your say, despite Phillips media connections who often help over inflate shares as he was already found guilty in the USA.

Dispatches was very good,although I thought your interview was a bit short – too many scenes of you walking along a road and entering a block of flats.What I was very surprised about,though,was the mention of Nat Rothschild(with regards to Deripaska’s US visa),whose name normally goes completely unmentioned in any press expose.

“Meantime, it is worth noting that libel bullies the Quilliam Foundation and their pathetic lawyers Clarke Willmott seem to have skulked away. Not one of the individuals – including Jack Straw, Tim Spicer, Allisher Usmanov and Ed Hussain – who has set the lawyers onto this blog has ever dared to go to court.”

You’d have thought that a sensible society would offer some redress to ensure these cowards don’t get away with their bullying and threats.

It’s a sad fact of life that the scum really does rise to the top. It’s no wonder public life and services are in such a sorry state when these end up running the show.

I’m afraid that the great mass of decent people just getting on with their lives don’t realise how bad it is at the top. They assume that those at the top are decent people just like them. Not so. The decent people are weeded out along the way.

Maybe the oligarchs and Quillam have the same masters – all working for the intelligence services who in turn serve the Establishment/hidden government. Perhaps the oligarchs act as front men for companies owned in the main by our real rulers who through the intelligence services secretly steal from the taxpayer.

‘Meantime, it is worth noting that libel bullies the Quilliam Foundation and their pathetic lawyers Clarke Willmott seem to have skulked away. Not one of the individuals – including Jack Straw, Tim Spicer, Allisher Usmanov and Ed Hussain – who has set the lawyers onto this blog has ever dared to go to court.’

Oh dear, you send the shivers up them by donning bed sheets again Craig? :-0 I knew those turkeys would melt away like fairies at the slightest danger of someone shouting ‘Boo’ at them! I thought that ‘Despatches’ episode was quite good. This might interest you from 16.45:

Nice propaganda, Craig. Still demonstrating to the “elite” that you’re one of them.

British CEOs and corporations are lifting millions out of poverty, helping countries develop – right?

Corporations like BAT (British American Tobacco), which you praised in a speech – that company pays its workers in Kenya so little, they can’t afford enough food for their families.

Or AngloGold Ashanti, a British mining corporation in Africa – they effectively steal mining concessions off the local communities and then murder anyone that gets in the way of their profits:

Google “painful extraction” and “markcurtis”. From that article:

“It all has a depressingly familiar ring. The fingerprints of a British mining company are found to be all over abuses around the world. And again, there are high-level connections with the government.

“Karimov and his daughter have for decades resisted every attempt to liberalise and diversify Uzbekistan’s agriculture. The slaves pick for them. And for Sting, apparently.”

Yes, “liberalisation”, like NAFTA. It works well, doesn’t it, Craig? Millions of farmers put out of business in Mexico, desperate fathers trying to cross the border into the U.S., only to be shot.

But “liberalisation” is good news for the multinationals and British corporations you defend, Craig. And it’s especially good for the financial sector, as we all learned recently.

For those who want to know what corporations have in store for us, google “Multilateral Agreement on Investment” (MAI), which, had it succeeded, would have given corporations unprecedented, and almost unchecked, power over governments, and, consequently, our lives. The UK government is implementing what it can of MAI, piecemeal.

Sting’s influence in the world is insignificant compared to CEOs. Why don’t you attack Madonna and the late Michael Jackson for performing in Israel, Craig? Nothing like celebrity gossip to keep the masses stupid.

Like all politicians, Craig, you unashamedly serve the interests of CEOs.

How about discussing AngloGold Ashanti, Craig, a British mining corporation in Ghana.

From “Painful Extraction” by Mark Curtis, a British journalist:

“Anglo American, the world’s second largest mining company, today announces its financial figures for 2007, on the back of record profits in 2006 of more than $6bn. Last year, I visited Obuasi in Ghana, the site of Africa’s largest gold mine, run by AngloGold Ashanti (AGA), an Anglo American subsidiary. The mine had polluted local water systems, while many people told me how they live in fear of joint company/police ‘security’ patrols, which have allegedly shot or killed several trespassers on company territory – a charge denied by AGA. In the past year, the appalling poverty of villagers literally living on top of gold has not improved one jot…”

All these libel actions do is to draw attention to what they are trying to hide! In the case of the Quilliam Foundation, that must be its accounts. I look forward to an analysis of the QF accounts by Craig when he gets back.

Actually I have written quite extensively about the dreadful environmental and social record of the international gold mining industry in Ghana, including Anglo Ashanti. I also had some small input in the government of Ghana’s decision to raise taxes on the gold mining industry in the budget now before parliament, and am advising them to raise taxes substantially in the oil industry. So I am not quite sure where your view of what I am doing in Ghana comes from.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist. What I put forward were ideas for thought; these ideas are totally logical given the information available. However, of course the ideas may be totally wrong; equally they may be right but to slam them down outright by smearing me as a conspiracy theorist leds me to think I may be on the right track.

No one ever conspires to do anything, especially things they wouldn’t want you to know about.

I’m not sure that I understand your criticism of Craig; is it because he criticized the Left?

Yes, corporations do terrible things. So do some governments, left and right. The problem is not left vs right, both of which have valid points, and between which I believe there should exist a balance. The problem is unbridled pursuit of power and domination. Left wing power structures attract megalomaniacs just as much as the right wing does. It just so happens that we live at a time when corporations have won the greatest power.

I think you should read more of what Craig has to say. Craig is not a leftie, but I think you’ll find much that you’ll agree with. Try his articles on Imperialism, or “There’s Good Money in Death” on August 12th 2007.

You obviously have a healthy concern for the welfare of others. Those of us who care must not let our ideological differences divide us, for divided we shall fall. Read more of Craig’s writings. I think you’ll find that his morals are sound.

Clark: before ‘expendable’ answers. I broadly agree with you, but would make the following points: a left wing power structure which becomes megalomaniac is no longer a left wing power structure: it is a bunch of megalomaniacs. Look at Labour. Does anyone still think it is left wing? Spain, on the other hand, seems to be doing relatively well, as does New Zealand (balanced, in the latter case, by the ‘right’). I’d rather live in either than in Berlusconi’s Italy.

“It just so happens that we live at a time etc”. Back in the 17th century Hobbes was calling corporations “worms in the body politic”. They have not “won” power, they have infiltrated and become almost indistinguishable from government. BP staff get placements in the FCO. Ex-MP’s go on to work for BAE. “Corporations do terrible things” – quite. And they are unelected. The serious ones have private spies in the UK and private armies abroad. To be (ridiculously) fair, a ‘fiduciary duty’ also prevents them from doing anything which would jeopardise profits. But where’s the will to change that?

I used “won” in a broad sense, not like “winning” an election. The practices you mention are HOW corporations “win” power.

I see the Left – Right thing like this:

Left – Right, in the political sense, is an economic scale (see politicalcompass.org).

Psychologically, Left correlates with the instinct to cooperate, and Right with the instinct to compete. Without either of these instincts, Humanity wouldn’t have become dominant, and we wouldn’t be discussing this. Both instincts are present in all individuals, but in varying proportion.

Left power structures CAN become overly authoritarian while remaining on the Left, for instance, when they overly nationalize, or prevent healthy competition between businesses by creating a vast state monopoly. Or when they just kill or imprison people they think are too Right-wing.

Left unchecked, corporations will eat eachother until a vast private monopoly emerges, cf: Micro$oft. It’s ironic that such seeming opposites can lead to such similar outcomes.

And yes, I think there are plenty of people who still think of Labour as Left-wing, or at least Left of the Tory party. I don’t agree with them, but I’m guessing that’s how they think. And I think the Labour party will still get one of the highest votes at the next general election (within the top three), and those voters will think they were voting to the Left.

“I shall be posting at the end of this week on a US racketeer, Gene E Phillips, and his corrupt – and so far succesful – attempt to rip off billions of dollars from the poor people of Ghana. I gave an interview on this to the FT last week and I am hopeful they will be running a less detailed expose on Thursday, on which I will follow up.”